“Oh, we must make that happen.”
As Mariana rhapsodized about the possibility of having Lord St. Alban’s brilliant daughter at the school, Olivia’s mind drifted. She didn’t enjoy lying to her sister, but her dealings with Lord St. Alban existed in a peculiar limbo that she didn’t yet understand. She felt strangely protective of it.
And then yesterday, she’d almost—
Her eyes squeezed shut in mortification. Oh, what had she done? Or almost done?
It was no surprise that last night thoughts of him had pushed sleep out of reach. Frustrated with tossing about and twisting the bed sheets into knots, she’d padded down to her studio to purge her system of him in the only way she knew how: by drawing her obsession into submission.
Her pencil had gone at him from every angle, even introducing different lightings to accentuate the strengths of his firm lips, his chiseled jawline, his angular cheekbones, his piercing eyes that surely saw through her contrariness, her protests, to her true wants, desires,needs.
By the time the first rays of the sun had streamed through an open window, she was spent. Dozens of drawings littering the walls of her studio, she felt that she could be done with him. Surely, her system was thoroughly purged.
Tonight, however, that purging had felt less than thorough when she’d spied him from two rooms away. She’d vowed to stay away.
Instead, she’d spoken of love with him. And she’d spoken of Percy. And they’d spoken of perfection and messes. What a perfect, little mess she could make with him . . .
Oh. Where had that come from?
“Olivia”—
She could hear the gasp in Mariana’s voice. No mean feat.
—“you must explain this series of paintings to me.”
They stood in the final room, the climax of the show. Three portraits lined one wall while facing them on the opposite wall was an oversized map of Europe. Unlike the scenes in the other rooms, these paintings weren’t presented with an extravagant contextual vignette.
“Do you think they’re too much?”
“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about,” replied Mariana, a tease in her voice. “Whores and grande dames share wall space all the time.”
Olivia closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them, hoping to see the portraits in a fresh light, as a new viewer might take them in.
To the left was the first portrait of a self-satisfied lady seated in front of her equally self-satisfied husband, who stood behind her, a proprietary hand on her shoulder.
In the middle was a portrait of a sensuous opera singer lounging on a sofa, head tilted back to better hear the coercive whispers of the young buck stretched out behind her, clearly on the precipice of an amorous diversion. The woman’s saucy gaze remained fixed on those of the viewer as if they shared a naughty secret.
The last portrait portrayed a prostitute, her stare direct and bleak, as a shadowy man cupped her chin in a possessive and sinister manner from behind. The sad resignation within her eyes made Olivia want to look away even as she was drawn into the woman’s plight.
“Was the map directly across excessive? Earlier, it seemed like an excellent idea.”
“A way of underscoring the show’s message about the casualties of empire?” Mariana asked. Leave it to Mariana to cut straight to the heart of a matter.
“Has it strayed into melodrama?”
“Perhaps,” Mariana replied absently, transfixed by the impudent opera singer, “but some people you just have to bash over the head before they understand the subtleties of a situation.”
Of the three subjects, it was the opera singer who had made Olivia the most uncomfortable from the first moment she’d laid eyes on her yesterday. The woman’s frank, sultry gaze suggested not only her own pleasure to come, but also an invitation to watch. Or to participate.
Her heart fluttered a few beats, sending a warm throbbing sensation to the apex of her thighs. She shifted to study the young buck’s face. His eyes appeared to have only just drifted shut, lost to the anticipation of pleasure.
Percy had never taken her from behind in that way. Their amorous interactions had been, well, they’d been a respectful husband and wife in the bedroom. Lights out, covers drawn, domestic, proper, typical of their class, she suspected, but could never know with certainty as one never discussed such things. Not even with one’s sister, especially when one suspected one’s sister had an altogether different bedroom relationship with her husband.
But when she gazed upon the painting with Lord St. Alban in mind, well, she had no trouble envisioning him lost to such a moment and ensuring his lover was, too.
“He left some minutes ago.”
Olivia startled into the present. A thin sheen of perspiration rushed to the surface of her skin, crawling along the nape of her neck, coating her palms. “I beg your pardon?”
